For A Crowd-Pleasing Appetizer, Whip Up A Sourdough And Butter Board

Freshly baked sourdough loaves offer the kind of crunchy crust and chewy crumb that is perfect for scooping up spreads and toppings. While classic sourdough recipes can be vehicles for various condiments, uniquely flavored sourdough can also offer a tempting base for simple swipes of butter. At Athens' award-winning Line Bar, the Bread Experience offers a savory or sweet combination of sourdough breads and condiments made in-house. "Bread is like white canvas," Line Bar's head baker Phaedra Mavroeidi Svana told Tasting Table. When it comes to bringing guests together at a party, few ingredients can top the simplicity of bread and a compilation of aesthetically displayed accouterments. 

Though putting together bread and butter boards may require planning, such carefully made presentations can elevate your next dinner party. Set out salted butter, sweet cream butter, whipped butter, cultured butter, and. plant-based butter for the vegans at your party to swipe onto sourdough served hot out of the oven, toasted on the grill, or coated in garlic powder. You can make compound butters to accompany sliced sourdough — roasted garlic compound butter can comfortably find its way onto plain sourdough or a savory sourdough pretzel — or you can purchase pre-made butters from your local market.

At Line Bar, multiple flavors of sourdough such as spinach and beetroot are presented alongside homemade Kefir butters made with leftover herbs, shrimp and koji bisque, or black garlic and garum. Consider texture and color when arranging your own presentations, and provide shallow dishes of garnishes for guests to sprinkle onto their buttered bread. Small vessels of melted ghee and olive oil encourage guests to explore a range of flavors and textures, and of course, tapenade and olives can add variety to the spread. 

Freshly chopped herbs, oven-roasted garlic, smoked paprika, red pepper flakes, and flaky sea salt can provide an easy boost of flavor to buttered slices of sourdough. Line Bar enhances bread and butter boards with feta cheese made with ingredients like sun-dried tomato, leftover ketchup sediments, basil, or nuts. Sometimes, a BBQ burnt eggplant spread appears as part of the Bread Experience (exact offerings vary since Line's recipes are based on the kitchen's sustainability and zero-waste practices). Whether you disperse trays of bread and plated boards of butter alongside scattered drink stations or set out a larger spread in the kitchen for guests to gather around and help themselves, neatly presented ingredients can almost guarantee that the rest of the evening will fall into place. At the very least, guests will enjoy experimenting with and filling themselves with bread and butter pairings.